The Olympic Museum

I'm definitely a "museum person." I love the concept of the museum: the creative displays of information, the ability to be interactive, the celebration of art, science, or history. If a museum is well-done, I could easily spend hours meandering through the exhibits, learning and discovering.  I love learning and I love being entertained, and often, a good museum is able to do both.

For the most part, however, my enjoyment of museums is centered on science museums. London's Museum of Natural History, Chicago's Museum of Science and Technology, The Science Museum of Minnesota--these are all places I could easily spend an afternoon. The same goes form aquariums and planetariums-- I simply can't get enough of them.

While I appreciate art and history museums, they generally don't hold my attention nearly as well. Although part of that stems from simply liking science more than history, it also reflects the typical history museum: boring panels of dense information, artifacts with teeny-tiny captions, nothing to push, prod, or interact with.

Lausanne's Olympic Museum, however, is different. I suppose if I had to put a label on it, I'd call it a "History Museum", but it is far from the typical one. The museum traces the unique history of the Olympic Games, showing how the past century of competition has reflected the world-wide political climate at the time. It's history, yes, but somehow, by being present through the Olympic Games, it becomes a lot less dull.

beautiful fountains outside of the museum.

the olympic flag! the five rings represent the
five continents at the first olympic games.
the colors used are those that appear on
flags throughout the world. 

outside the museum was a fantastic, sports-themed sculpture
garden. 

horse sculpture! reminds me of kentucky :)

ben beside a sailing sculpture. 

this was one of my favorites. 

the museum's sculpture garden has a wonderful
view of the lake and mountains. 

naturally, ben felt compelled to climb the
giant ring sculpture....

....even though I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to :)

Although the Olympic Museum is probably closest to being a history museum, there are definitely some scientific aspects as well. One of my favorite exhibits focused on the intersection of science and athletics, showing how different training and coaching technologies have improved sports. The exhibit invited you to test different aspects of your own athleticism-- balance, coordination, visual acuity, response time-- and then explained which sports these atributes were most important for and how they might be improved. It was very interactive, very interesting, and very, very fun. 

In a nutshell: Lausanne Olympic Museum. Highly, highly recommended.